What a Week!

As we say about most weeks here, what a week! But this week was special most definitely. As a team we felt it necessary to better equip our church body to witness about Christ to their family, friends, and neighbors. A way we reach people here with the Word of God is through chronological Bible story telling. Have you listened to a story lately? Do you realize that nearly 75% of the Bible is narration? Stories are fun to listen to, aren’t they? There is a missionary couple in Tanzania who focuses their work on storying the Bible with people. It is through the stories they can come to understand the whole picture of the Word of God and come to know how Christ saves us from our sins and makes us right with God. Monday through Wednesday the missionary couple and their friend, a native Tanzanian, storied through 37 stories of the Bible. After each, they took time to answer questions. Boy the look on the faces of the church members was beautiful. They weren’t just hearing a story, but the Word of God start to finish. Unbelievable! It was also through the church members’ questions that we realized who among the church body truly understood the Gospel. For those who didn’t understand, we were able to clarify Grace and especially that faith in Christ is a gift. The last two days were used for the church body to themselves story in front of the group. A challenging thing for sure! After they storied, they were given input about how to improve. The highlight of the week was when young man storied who is not able to read or write. He had just listened attentively to when the story was told at the start of the week and then had his children read the passage in the Bible to him the night before and he did a wonderful job of storying. He proved to the church body that is unable to read or write that anybody can do it. At the end of the week he praised God for what he learned this week so he can witness to his friends and neighbors. It almost brings you to tears! Overall, it was a very special week. As a team we are praying about where to go from here to make sure people truly understand what they believe in.
So I bet you all are wondering how our visas/residency permits are coming along. Well we only have 11 more days until we are illegal’s in this country. There continues to be some major glitches, especially with Em’s nursing license. There is so much to this story that we will not go into, but please pray. Our team member has taken our passports to Dar in an effort to get it to go through. If not able by Thursday, she will return and we will have to spend a weekend in Mombasa, Kenya to reenter the country with a 90 day visa. We have been missing going to the movies, so this might be our chance to go see a movie. However, it’s not exactly how we wanted to do it since it takes time away from our community and is rather costly.
We are really getting into our grove of where we fit and what our roles are. Sarah had a break from school this week and returns the middle of next week. Hard to believe midterms were here already for school children (school year runs from January until December). We have two more weeks in the village until we go on a safari with Em’s parents for a week. Then she is very excited because her parents will be coming to the village to experience life here for a few days and meet all our friends and see our church and school. Then we head to our Africa Inland Mission conference in Dar and Em’s parents go to Zanzibar. Needless to say, October is a busy month. Please pray for travel mercies as we are going all over the place! Traveling can always be an interesting adventure.
We hear so often of how many people are tuning into our website. This is such a blessing. Thanks for your prayers and support! Keep them coming!!! We wouldn’t be here without you all, and we are both eternally grateful.


Blessings,
Em & Sarah

PS-GO CARDINALS!!!!
PSS- The dead rat count is now at 5. We have been rat free for 6 days! Praise Jesus!

September Morn

Is anyone a Neil Diamond fan? Hopefully one of you got that reference. My mom raised me on Neil Diamond. When I return I will be blasting America! Well maybe not. Any who, I can’t believe it is already September and we have been here over 2 months! We are hitting our stride and God continues to provide us with everything we need and more to live with and serve the people in our community (though not without challenges-each day brings a new humbling experience). With each week at the school I grow to know the students more, and I realize my purpose is so much more than teaching (though I do enjoy it). Some of my favorite moments with the kids occur when I am sitting with them during porridge time or playing with them at recess. It’s amazing to see their little faces light up when you give them a high five or encourage them! They are eager to learn and teach me Swahili. I have visited some of the children at their homes, and it was great to speak with their parents about their progress and how they are doing on homework. This is a special time for families too, as other schools do not conduct home visits. It is good to check in to make sure the children are being cared for as well. Sadly some kiddos are neglected, so we want to make sure they are safe and getting what they need at home. The school has worked very hard to get parents and families involved in their child’s education. My relationships with our headmaster, Matinya, as well as the other four teachers continue to grow and deepen. It is exciting to get to know them and their families. Emily and I were able to celebrate teacher Mary’s daughter’s birthday last week, and we were delighted to be a part of the celebration. We are welcomed into their homes, and we hope to host them once a month for dinner at our house! We continue to learn how to cook African food, so it will be exciting to cook entire meals for guests in the upcoming months. Midterm assessments are this week for the kiddos, so we are hoping to see great progress for the first half of the second term. I feel that before I know it, we will be ending the school year in December. The standard-one children are working on a presentation they will perform for parents in English at the end of the year. They will speak about the importance of money and education and decide which is more important. Good thing we all agree that education is very important. Each day when I go to each class they say, “Education is the key of life, Good morning teacher, how are you?” It is so sweet. They understand the importance of education to better their lives and enable them to have more opportunities. God willing, they will continue to be motivated by the possibilities of greater opportunities through education. Not only so, but our school hopes to teach them the Gospel to give them real hope for their future. It can be discouraging seeing the state of local government schools, but Tanzania is working very hard to improve their schools however, it is difficult to fight corruption in rural areas such as where we live. We just have to continue to pray and be an advocate for the children in our area. All I know is that God continues to bless each day at the school even though I am still learning language and can’t communicate fully. He gives me peace and patience to persevere. I am thankful that I can rest in that and not feel like I have to have all the answers. I know I don’t. There’s liberation in that, though it’s hard to admit and know you don’t have any control in certain situations. I usually get flustered then take a moment to step out of myself and look in on the situation, realizing I just need to take a deep breath and press on. Emily continues to visit the school daily to check in on specific students with health issues and help those with every day cuts and scrapes. It can be overwhelming because once they see one; every kiddo wants a band-aid. We have gotten very good at teaching them how to wash with soap and water. You’d be amazed what those two things can do! Outside of school, Emily and I continue to learn Swahili through our language lessons and visiting friends and neighbors. It’s become more challenging now that we’ve made it over the first hump of initial greetings and basic conversation. Now we are getting into correct grammar and subject verb agreement with all these different noun classes, and it gets very tricky. We want to speak correctly, but if we only spoke when we knew the agreements, we’d barely be talking to anyone. We just have to put ourselves out there and be ready to get corrected. Everyone is willing to help us speak correctly, and it is a big help! We continue to get more visitors now that we have been here a while! We are adjusting to the cultural differences when it comes to stopping whatever you are doing to visit. We have learned to make plans but be ok if we don’t follow a single one. We feel so blessed to have the continued support of our team, as well as the help of our close neighbors and friends. I was not feeling well the other day and stayed at the house instead of going out visiting, and I had several people (including our “grandma” next door) make sure I was ok, and others told Mary and Emily that they were sorry I was sick. To know people are looking out for us encourages us.

One more quick story about how God is faithful. Emily and I have encountered two families with children who are hearing impaired. Emily had the intention of going to the Disabled Children’s Clinic in Tanga last Friday to see if they had any resources but forgot. Just by chance, she was walking by on Saturday and the door was open. She walked in and they were having a meeting with several hearing impaired people. She was able to talk to the workers there and make some contacts to give information back to the families in our village. We were so excited to have this work out! God has a way of putting us right where we need to be to accomplish His plans. We are so grateful to witness Him working in this place each and every day. I keep reminding myself to be thankful that God works in us and through us despite us (thanks Darren Patrick for that one). It’s just exciting to be a part of life here. Even when we’re exhausted and at the end of our rope. He meets us right there! Thank you too for your continued love and encouragement. Keep the thoughts and prayers coming!

Ps- in the past two days there have been 4 mouse sightings in our house. Three have been dealt with (thanks to 2 of our manly neighbors) and one is MIA…we’re definitely finding a mousetrap while in town today. It’s a sad day when you start naming your mice and talk to them when you see them scurry into your kitchen instead of being shocked by their presence. Let us know if you have any suggestions. Poison only appeared to produce more vermin.

Peace out ~S